


Monsters and Manuals

by buttermagic (heraldmage)



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-09-28 01:33:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10061900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heraldmage/pseuds/buttermagic
Summary: This is a small on-going fic about a Wizard who's Manual and Oath were particularly nerdy.Should be light fluff, but I'll warn if I suddenly get mean with my chars.





	1. Chips and Chatter

“Right… so how did you find out, cousin? Book in the library? Voice in your head? Weird TV channel?” Ross put down his pint just in time to avoid spilling it over as Eilidh cuffed him in the back of the head.

“Rude, Ross!” she said with a wide roll of her eyes. “Excuse my brother, he asks everyone that one when he’s more than two pints in.”

Despite the familial violence, Hugo couldn’t help but notice that she looked almost as curious as Ross and he smiled.

“It’s alright.” He waved a hand in the air and after taking a quick sip of his own glass rummaged into his backpack for a small purple velvet-like drawstring bag. “My seniors back home tell me that is used to be taboo, but now most people don’t mind sharing. They blame all those new smart-device Manuals.”

“I’m on the waiting list,” Eilidh confessed. “Although I’m still not sure what I’m going to use.”

Hugo opened the purple bag and put his hand inside, and then his wrist and then kept going until he found what he was looking for. Ross laughed when he noticed what he had done to the bag.

“Isn’t it easier to use a non-attached access?” He asked but poked the bag with what seemed like approving professional amusement.

“I find it more organised to have a physical anchor, but I have an emergency non-attached access, just in case.”

“Smart. So… your Manual?”

Hugo couldn’t help but blush, now that he had had some beer, and nodded, pulling out a big colourful, slightly shiny book and placing it on the table, facing his newly-met cousins.

“Is that a  _ dragon _ ?” Ross asked excitedly. “Why is th-”

“No.” His sister interrupted, looking between the book and Hugo’s red face. Hugo kept telling himself he was no longer embarrassed, and he wasn’t, but this was still funny. “But… really?”

“Yup. I was nine.” He said and shrugged.

“Oh no. Nononono…” Eilidh wagged a finger at him and then put it down emphatically on the hardcover sitting between them. “You don’t get away with just a shrug. I am getting the next round, then you’re telling us the whole story, Hugo.” She left quickly, shaking her head.

Ross shouted over the booth wall for some chips to go with their beer and Hugo laughed again, looking down at his big colourful Manual, and wondered how many other people got roleplaying manuals as their manuals.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First contact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to get a few chapters done before posting, but my life has been a mess. So you get this, and I have no idea when I'll do the next one. Thanks for reading. :)

The day so far had been pretty great. They went to watch a movie about toys running around while humans weren't watching, they played some games in the arcade, and they bought popcorn that tasted like cheese.

But now came the good part.

“Can I buy three books today?” Hugo, small, curly haired, and with a mouth full of cheese powder, asked his father. He was sure he was playing it cool, but his father's amused look said he wasn't fooling him.

“Maybe.” The 40-odd year old man, with a hairline that had long ago retired, said with a hand on his shoulder, navigating Hugo through the crowd in front of the registers.

“Maybe, maybe, maybe.” Hugo murmured as he finished his popcorn and stuffed the empty paper bag into a pocket of his jeans. ‘Maybe' meant he could get one. Two if he was careful.

Two books would take him through Thursday, maybe. Then he could reread them, or one of the other books in his new but growing personal collection.

This bookstore was the biggest he'd ever been to, although he had recently found out about much larger ones online. It had two floors, and it had an escalator  _ inside _ the store, which still impressed Hugo. The bottom floor was mostly history books, autobiographies, and travel books. The upstairs was where all the fun stuff live and pulled Hugo like a giant magnet.

He climbed the moving escalator into the mystery section, lightly touching the spines of books he wasn’t quite yet allowed to read. Then there was horror, he had already snuck a couple Stephen King books over the summer, but he hadn’t really gotten a taste for them. Then a brief art section stuck in a corner and finally his personal version of Elysium.

Soon enough he’d grow to know better, but right now this appeared to be every single fantasy and science fiction book in existence. All of it just patiently waiting for Hugo get to them and devour them.

Asimov, Allende, Dick, Shelley, Bradbury, García Gallego, Tolkien, Le Guin, Pratchett, Lackey, Hobb…

It was always overwhelming at first, so he spent some time just walking up and down the shelves, looking at the spines, touching the top edges with care. Some of the covers were bright, others dark with stark lettering. Some were obviously shiny and new, others had spent some more time on the shelf and had slightly worn edges, but they all looked magnificent to him.

The last book he had finished had been the end of a trilogy, so he was in the market for something completely new, and it was very hard to settle his mind on anything.

He had been told off in one of his previous visits for pulling all the books he was interested in into a little pile and then deciding from those, so now he was a bit more careful. When he did his first pass he made sure all the books were flush with the edge of the shelves, and then on his second pass he would pull those that seemed a little more interesting than the other a little bit out, marking them for himself.

Of course, this system wasn’t perfect, sometimes someone else would come along and make a mess of things for him, but most of the time he was able to do this at his leisure until he made his mind. “Making up his mind” sometimes was just the mad dash to pick anything from the nearest shelf before his parents pulled him away to get back home, but today he was going to make sure he chose the books he really wanted.

Twenty-odd minutes later he was reaching towards the shelf fruitlessly as his father pulled him gently but firmly away and towards the stairs.

“But…”

“If you knew what you wanted, you would have already made a choice. We’ll go to the library tomorrow. And we can buy a book next time we come here.”

“But… when?” Hugo said, and he was aware of how whiny he sounded. His mother said it was not nice to sound so whiny.

“Probably next weekend. Now, let’s go.”

Hugo stood by his dad in line as he bought a large book that WINDOWS SERVER on the cover. It was a work book, a big set of rules and instruction that he used to do his job. Almost all of the shelves in his dad’s study were full of them, and Hugo wondered frequently why the interesting books were all restricted to a single small corner at the back, small paperbacks by Gibson and Huxley, books that in some cases had never had their spines cracked, at least, until Hugo got his hands on them.

The line was moving too slowly for Hugo, and he started looking around. His dad’s hand kept him in place, but his eyes roamed. The queue was blocked on their left by half height displays that were still a few centimetres taller than him, and were full of small books, notepads, and even some sweets. All of it was somewhat interesting, but nothing really caught his attention until he almost tripped.

“You okay?” His dad asked, looking down with a raised eyebrow and a small smile.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Be careful, make sure those shoelaces are tight.”

“Okay,” Hugo said with a roll of his eyes he hid by turning around and kneeling down to check on his shoes. As he thought, they were perfectly tied. His dad always thought his shoelaces were coming undone for some reason. He put a hand down to push himself up and his hand brushed against something unexpected. There was  a book sitting upright between two of the displays.

Hugo frowned and tried to pick the book up, but it seemed to have fallen down and wedged itself in the hole between the displays. He frowned a little more and pulled harder. This time the book popped loose and Hugo almost fell over backwards into the stout man that was standing behind them in the queue. He mumbled a couple of embarrassed ‘sorries’ and scuttled back up next to his father and then looked down at the book.

A WIZARD’S MANUAL was emblazoned in bright gold at the top of the cover, the font stylised and fantastical, the bottom of the Z looked like a dragon’s tail. A full proper dragon was standing on hind legs, spouting fire up into the air, while a very traditional-looking wizard in long starry robes and holding a gnarled wooden staff shot bright lights at the dragon.

They got to the head of the line and a tall woman in a bright purple dress with a black sweater and a shiny nametag that read “MARIA”. Hugo only noticed this because the lady took his dad’s book and then just pulled the book in Hugo’s hands and scanned them both.

“Just this?” She asked with a smile, scanning the books, his father nodded.

Something weird happened then, after the strange wizard book got scanned, the register’s screen flashed and a cursive script that looked familiar appeared for a moment, and then cleared itself. The book was still on the screen, but it’s price was marked as SUBSIDISED. His dad was distracted pulling money out of his wallet, and the woman was looking for a bag, so neither of them noticed anything, and when the woman looked at the screen to confirm payment, she didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.  _ An offer perhaps _ , Hugo thought, and when the woman filled the bag he quickly grabbed it.

It was _heavy_ , he had to use both arms, pinning the bag against his chest to carry it, but he was determined to keep this book close. Something was going on and he wasn’t sure what it was, but he wanted to read it as soon as possible.


End file.
